ORDER BY clause in SQL

In this exercise, we will learn about the ORDER BY clause in SQL.

The ORDER BY clause in SQL is used to sort the result set of a query by one or more columns. We can sort the results in ascending order (default) or descending order.

SQL Syntax

SELECT column1, column2
FROM table_name [WHERE condition]
ORDER BY column1 [ASC|DESC], column2 [ASC|DESC], …;   

If we have not specified, the sort order of the column then by default it sort by ascending order, or explicitly we can use the ASC keyword to sort by ascending order. To sort the column by descending order, use the DESC keyword with the column name.

Example: Let’s create an employees table.

SQL

CREATE TABLE Employees (
   EmployeeID INT,
    Name VARCHAR(20),
    Age int,
    Salary VARCHAR(10),
    Department VARCHAR(25),
    Gender VARCHAR(1)
); 

Load the data into the Employees table.

SQL

insert into Employees values
(1, ‘Ashish’, 24, ‘25000’, ‘Electrical’, ‘M’), 
(2, ‘Kirshan’, 32, ‘30000’, ‘Electrical’, ‘M’),
(3, ‘Anjali’, 20, ‘25000’, ‘Electronics’, ‘F’),
(4, ‘Manjulika’, 30, ‘15000’, ‘Electrical’, ‘F’),
(5, ‘Katrina’, 37, ‘18000’, ‘Computer’, ‘F’),
(6, ‘Esha’, 37, ‘20000’, ‘Computer’, ‘F’),
(7, ‘Ankita’, 20, ‘9000’, ‘Electronics’, ‘M’), 
(8, ‘Meenakshi’, 30, ‘15000’, ‘Computer’, ‘F’),
(9, ‘Alia’, 37, ‘16000’, ‘Electronics’, ‘F’);  

By executing the following query, we can see the data in the table:

SQL

The above query returned the following result:

Table: Employees

Sorting by a Single Column (Ascending Order) By default, the ORDER BY clause sorts the column in ascending order.

SQL

This query will sort the employees by their salary in ascending order.

SQL

The above query will also work even if we are not selecting the salary column from the table.

Sorting by a Single Column (Descending Order) To sort the results in descending order, you use the DESC keyword.

SQL

This query will sort the employees by their salary in descending order.